skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
That's exactly the reason. It's from the Video Privacy Protection Act of 1988 (VPPA), which ``preserve[s] personal privacy with respect to the rental, purchase, or delivery of video tapes or similar audio visual materials.''[1] It prohibits video tape service providers from knowingly disclosing their consumers' personally identifiable information.

[1] Pub. L. 100-618, 120 Stat. 3195 (1988) (codified at 18 U.S.C. §2710 (2006)).
"Web users" barter their own data in exchange for the use of free services. If you sold your own data, why would companies continue to offer you a "free" account? Certainly not for the ad views...
It is only a matter of time until somebody gets a webbrowser running inside another with javascript as a joke.

What will be interesting is to see how long we have to wait afterwards until someone decides that it might be a useful thing to do in production.
A while ago I launched https://pinad.com.au and I'm looking for feedback and comments.

It's a general classifieds tool, but before dismissing it, please give it a chance. I know it's a boring area, but I've also seen a lot of complains on HN about massive players in this field not providing 1/10 of the features I provide. You may experiment these features here (use the left-menu options and see the content of Category & characteristics section):

https://pinad.com.au/search

https://pinad.com.au/items/new

I'm interested to understand how easy/hard is for somebody to use it (from a flow perspective) and also what do you think about the UI. Would you use such a tool to post your own listings or search for listings?

You may see existing listings here: https://pinad.com.au/browse . No account is required to browse or post new entries.

Thanks, I appreciate your time. Adrian
Unlikely (read: impossible). Even if they could have ported it in the 6 days since that announcement, there's no way they rammed a new app through App Store approval that fast. They'd probably already have had to have submitted it before the announcement given current wait times.
RIP OpenSolaris. You are in a better place now.
Even if it doesnt give us a warp drive, the research should be encouraged as it may lead to better understandings of the universe, maths and physics.

Seriously though, beyond the "Fuck Yeah I want a starship" How does anyone make sensible comments on subjects where the concepts and Math are several levels above their ability let alone fund it.

If this hadn't come from a NASA source I would have ignored it.
Blatant Lies Get in the Way of Building Customer Trust
This company isn't actually cutting checks, so the volunteers aren't selling their own data as much as letting themselves be spied upon for charity and "maybe perks in the future".
Xcode 4.5.1, is out.
Unfortunately this (good) product will take at least a generation to make it to the academic world.

I put my thesis together in HTML using Pandoc, customized to look a bit like a Tufte publication with margin notes. It had animations, anchor links when cross-referencing paragraphs, and in my eyes, made sense for a document like a thesis.

My committee members, on the other hand, were in consensus that a thesis should be a PDF with page numbers, not some multimedia document with hyperlinks. When I made a PDF[0] and submitted it to the university, someone even checked it to make sure the page numbering switched from Roman to Arabic at the correct point as stipulated by the submission guidelines (it didn't, hence my knowledge of their thoroughness).

Considering that universities today often don't even want a hard copy of a thesis, this is a world that is tied very strongly to the paper paradigm.

[0] Fortunately Pandoc did this quite nicely, though I did have to make a few changes to deal with citations. Incidentally, there is no good, cross-platform way to put an animation in a PDF.
We at NetApplications understand that our numbers are different from others who report market share. We are the only provider (as far as we know) that does weighting by country. No one has a data source that will truly represent the world accurately (percentage of traffic coming from a geographic region that is the same as the internet usage from that region), so it's an extremely important factor to appropriately report market share by continent or globally. A simple example is that China, by far, has the world's largest population and the world's largest base of internet users. While we have a vast amount of data coming in from China, we still have to factor it to more accurately represent actual internet usage. For more information about this, please read: http://www.netmarketshare.com/faq.aspx#Methodology
Startup Weekend Acquires Startup Digest
Thanks for shedding more light on this.

It sounds like you're saying that since the valuation of housing is primarily based on the wages of the surrounding population it should not be considered wealth. And that we shouldn't praise rising prices because we're not sure if they have a positive effect on the overall economy. But how is this different from any other investment if stocks, businesses, bonds, currency, etc all have these same properties? Or do they not?

Also what is your definition of wealth? Even though most people don't receive income from their houses (unless it's a 2nd house), I think the intent to pass it on as an asset to their family would classify it as wealth since it would then be an abundant resource as opposed to necessary shelter.

And if we got rid of housing as an investment what does the middle class have left? I'd love to see more people get into business either as an entrepreneur or an investor the risk and upfront cash means it's not for everybody. CD's and bonds are safe but no longer give the returns they used to.
Yup, love it.
Very cool, considering I've used Cloudant extensively with a Node server and backbone in the past. It's nice to see something that can talk directly with the DB. Though, could someone explain how I would implement permissions and security using this direct-to-Cloudant approach?
Well, we don't have any A/B tests, and we don't have any statistics, so all we have are anecdotes.

That said, my last job was at an angel-funded company, though these were atypical angels - all billionaires, some well-known names. The CEO was not only fat (330 pounds), but old (46), brash, loud, opinionated, and the kind of guy who would say "You know what we need on the landing page? Smokin' hot broads!" In the movie version, he will be played by a taller Danny DeVito.

But he was a good guy and a great salesman, and had no trouble raising multiple multi-million dollar rounds, even while pivoting completely - several times. His investors trusted him to treat their money with respect, and knowing his history, I would too.
Haha, I should have known... consider me educated 0_o
> Laws create private rights, and those rights can be contracted-away.

Maybe in your country.

In Australia, at least, they can not.

When going ice skating those signs that say "Skaters do so at their own risk" mean nothing in Australia. There are certain rights an individual can not sign away.
Re: "But the U.S. government wouldn’t provide Hardik with a visa to start the company. Hardik had no difficulty in getting an H1-B visa that allowed him to work, but immigration rules did not allow him to work for a company that he started. So, he abandoned his entrepreneurial dreams."

Obstacles like this shouldn't stop an entrepreneur. I had to do the whole H1-B thing myself, while bootstrapping another business on the side - and there are no rules against that. I know others who did the same. Have a job, launch a company in your spare time.
Use This Psychology Trick to Keep an Open Mind During the Debate
Yeah, my university formatting requirements are crazy also. This allowed me to have one source that outputs (nicely) to a bunch of different formats, including the university PDF requirement.
That's irrelevant, because the association is ever-present.

As an example, if people lived on Venus, they would be called "Venerials" by the proper genitive form. Alas, doctors got to it first (Venus, Roman goddess of love...) so it was changed to "Venutians". (Source: Neil DeGrasse Tyson's podcast, StarTalk radio).
"NWA shoutout to Paul Graham" from Rap Genius
As someone who until very recently worked for a ex-Canadian (moved here to Louisville) social music-related startup, I wish them the best of luck.

EDIT: on first glance; pretty nice work. Looks much cleaner and user-friendly than our own attempt at this sort of site. Slows Chrome down to a crawl, though.
Tech's Gender Gap: Real or Silicon (Valley) Made
Researchers Discover Bacteria That Produces Pure Gold
Source article: http://news.msu.edu/story/superman-strength-bacteria-produces-gold/
How to Look Inside Any Building in the World
Do you think there are many Americans who would turn down jobs at MS and Google due to low pay?
I personally believe that the fact of being "apocalyptic" help people shaping a better world.

Thinking that something might not be right in the future is a rather good incentive to try to make it better.

I'm not arguing that the world is not evolving in a better way, but, for example, the awareness risen by Orwell and Huxley might play a part in the fact that some people are trying to make a better future.
Foundry Group companies holding joint recruiting event in San Francisco
Plus, they seem to love clones in Germany. :)
I'm a web developer. I have Chrome Canary, WebKit Nightly and Firefox Minefield installed.

I still can't bring myself to prioritize a bug which affects only Chrome Dev channel users – and I don't have access to the log files to prove how little that matters.
First SpaceX launch to supply Space Station is next Sunday
In response to AH's recent 15M investment in Rap Genius, I'd like to share a hilarious annotation I found on the site.
Love the article.
Ellen Pao’s Lawyer: Kleiner Perkins Firing Was Retaliation
We would? Last I checked $1 can't even build some branches and a tarp.

You're ignoring, or haven't seen, the real meaning of his words.

Indeed, $1 houses will probably always be undesirable and poorly constructed. But, that doesn't mean $1 million is a reasonable amount to spend on a house.

The real problem is that housing has been turned from a durable good (like an automobile or a refrigerator) into a capital asset (like a stock or bond). So when housing prices go up, the people on the news say it's good for homeowners. However, it's only good for homeowners as a rise in stock-price is good for stockholders: the gain must be realized via an actual sale to someone who can afford this higher purchase price.

With stocks and bonds, it's easy-enough to say that there's always another investor, and if there isn't, then whoever died from lack of a share of stock? You might be totally unable to realize your financial gain, causing a stock-market bubble to pop and destroying your net worth, but only you, the asset holder, are taking any damage.

Ah, but housing is actually desired chiefly for its use-value, ie: to live in. So as the investment-ization of housing raises prices throughout whole markets at a time, it pushes out whole classes of people who just wanted somewhere to live, and increases the debt/mortgage burden for those who can still afford to buy.

So, to sum up this bit of the shpiel, a rise in housing prices only benefits society insomuch as it spurs the construction of new housing in useful locations by signaling through the market to real-estate developers to build more. When the housing supply is fixed, or growing far more slowly than the price of housing (as in places like San Francisco or Boston), a rise in housing prices is effectively just a zero-sum transfer of wealth from society in general to real-estate owners -- economic rent-extraction.

Contrast with automobiles, or refrigerators. We expect to buy them fresh and new, and watch them depreciate over time. It's entirely sensible to buy a used one, but we don't ever expect to buy a used car and sell it for more later. We do, however, expect these things to last a long time, whole decades.

It's easiest for current municipalities, in the thrall of property owners, to treat housing as a capital asset and use it to extract economic rent (income earned for ownership rather than production) from the rest of society. However, it's best for society if we manage to get housing treated as a durable good: worthy of our money, but ultimately something we produce rather than invest in.

We want housing to be like cars: expensive, but not so expensive that we feel a need to sell it off at a profit later and pervert both governments and markets to achieve that goal.
Gods they must be cray

Lyrics over HTTP?

What would Kool Herc say?

Venture valuation

Drifting to the perihelion

Maboo with the Bently scout

Now Marissa's got her checkbook out

Annotations the new cream

Even writin up your daydreams

Like Cobb with one last job

Wakin up before you scream

A Venn diagram intersection

"Seems like a bad idea"

"No really is a good idea"

Priceless like a loan rejection

Copyright in Fringe mint

Walter Bishop eating Thin Mints

Don't require six senses

To see text bubbles everywhere

Maybe time to give up the ghost

Or upgrade to a $7 sponsored post
As a counterpoint, I've found the iPhone app to be quite adept at handling horrible network conditions. I'm on AT&T – you need a massive buffer to soak up poor network engineering.
Dissecting the Massively Over-Subscribed Lockitron Launch
Don't sweat 802.11ac Wi-Fi - because 802.11ad will knock your socks off
There is already a system for people to tell their own private data.

It's called rebate card or a fidelity card, as offered by many commerces when you take time to give at least your address.

I'm just surprised that no e-commerce gives rebates in exchange of access to the client facebook account.
Chemical Analysis Reveals that New Phones Have Fewer Toxics
The US also holds certain rights that cannot be signed away, some of which hold for the whole US and some of which are per state. IANAL, but as I understand it the US does allow you to waive your right to pursuing certain types of claims in court (and that waiver can potentially be overturned on a case-by-case basis) but only by allowing arbitration instead. Arbitration is, in the most basic way of speaking, private court with different rules in effect. This is allowed because the US specifically allows it. In fact, the US has generally been a strong advocate of arbitration.
Why is it so hard finding a technical co-founder?
Yes I understand the whole "why would someone who is technical making $120,000 a year want to join your startup as a CTO for small pay and equity" argument but aren't startups all about taking risks?

I just want to find a great technical co-founder in the bay area but it's harder than I thought.
Well, the confidence intervals are right there on the charts, and look pretty damn significant to me...
Stereo audio has completely separate audio signals for the left and the right channels. One of the reasons to use separate channels is to allow creation of a "sound stage". If a track is well mastered/mixed and you have good speakers/headphones you should be able to pick out each performer's location as if they were on a stage in front of you. For example you should be able to discern where the lead guitarist is standing vs where the bass guitarist is standing. This is done by controlling the volume and phase of the sound in each channel for each performer. Generally the vocalist is placed dead center of the "sound stage" and the way to achieve that effect with stereo audio is to feed the exact same signal(in both phase and volume) into both the left and right channels. The 'mix' is just a term used for the way in which the various recordings of each performer are combined to create the final product.

There are a lot of fun things you can do acoustically with stereo sound. Some phasing effects can actually be pretty 'tripy' for lack of a better word.
Objective-C isn't owned by Apple? Who else is using it? Of the few other people who are using it, how many are using it without Apple's extensions? Apple does indeed de facto own Objective-C. They control it. They have embraced it, extended it, and extinguished anyone else who might have had a claim on it.

It's strange too that you have a problem with C# being proprietary, but you don't have a problem with Java being proprietary. Oracle owns both the language and the implementations that everyone uses. That it's part of their business plan to maintain it for Linux does not change its fundamental nature.

And just so you know, Microsoft did open the source for C# under admittedly restrictive terms. Look up Rotor. And they have issued a Community Promise that protects projects like Mono. And yes, Mono counts, just as surely as GCC counts, unless Microsoft also owns C++.
How Do Blind People Picture Reality?
Until the labels stop taking the vast majority of profits from these services to allow them to be profitable.

http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/24/pandora-and...

There was a post about it from Spotify, too, but I can't find it now.
I'm so glad its not just me.
This is what thesis writing procrastination looks like.
Haha, no need to address me like that; there's a reason why I'm working in SV again now. :P
I was part of the IK12 W2012 cohort and can answer some of your questions.

1) They don't reveal how many applications they receive, though they tend to accept around 9-10 teams for each cohort. Since they are modelled off of YC, much of their criteria and selectiveness are similar. Geoff Ralston, an IK12 partner, is also a partner with YC.

2) I don't think there's a good, standard answer for when is the best time to apply to an incubator. It kind of depends on your background. Like YC, if you & your team are a bunch of amazing hackers & hustlers, it's possible you'll be accepted without an idea. Having an established idea with demonstrable traction is also a good thing. I would suggest applying right now, just to go through the process. Even if you aren't accepted, the application process will force you to fine-tune your business strategy.

3) Being a non-technical founder is not necessarily a show-stopper. One of the current startups, NoRedInk.com, came in as a single non-technical founder. However, this founder is a teacher, had demonstrable traction, and had already raised some money - so he entered the program with an enticing track record so far.

Good luck!
Right, I should have mentioned this is for the US. Here, legal rights are presumptively waivable, even Constitutional ones.
Who said computers couldn't be made out of meat?
I'd avoid this industry like a plague.
Have you considered a patch antenna or something similarly directional right on the PCB? Still only one radio and reasonably robust direction detection as far as "is the signal coming from in front of me or behind me" is concerned.
To be fair, I only released it after my thesis was done :)
We had a Lockitron at dotCloud's first San Francisco office. It was great and very gratifying in a "programming the real world" way. Keep it up!
They already compete. More and more markets will be affected over time.
So THAT'S where all the water on Mars went...
If you understand why someone making $120k /yr would quit and join a startup then you get the idea.

If you want a technical cofounder then you have to view it as the first hurdle in your business. If you can't even pass this hurdle what makes you feel like you can succeed at anything else?

As a random aside...do you guys think finding a technical cofounder is harder than any of the business problems you will likely encounter on the road to success?
The answer from the link said 'in-phase cancellation' which isn't really a 'thing' nor accurate. He was just trying to say that when the signals are in phase you wouldn't get sound. There isn't actually any cancellation going on here. When the signal is the same in both channels there is just no voltage across the speaker so it doesn't do anything.
I have written my Bachelor thesis in org-mode and was incredibly happy with it. There is certainly a difference in requirements for a PhD Thesis, but I cannot think of any missing feature or hard to overcome problem right away.
I'm trying to help people like yourself come to Japan. Feel free to contact me: http://www.tokyodev.com/jobs/

If you have a university degree, it is actually pretty easy to get a visa here. While you might have trouble getting a job at a 3-person startup, something a bit more established shouldn't be an issue (as the article mentions, Gengo recruits non-Japanese, and they'll even hire people who aren't already in Japan).

The easiest way to get a job here is the same as anywhere else: be exceptional at something that is in demand.
I think in this case it's phase inversion of one of the signals as opposed to a phase shift which would imply a time difference.
AWS Reserved Instance Marketplace liquidity is increasing
Follows link, sees WP-SVBTLE theme

Uh-oh. Ten bucks says half the comments are about the theme and everyone's opinions of it, the blogger, and svbtle.

Comments

Yessss.
We're experimenting with this feature and really want it to work. We will keep refining it going forward. One really needs two radios or some very clever math to determine which side of the door one is on.

This could be an added incentive for customers to purchase your hardware for both their front and back doors. Then they've got two radios.

In two-door installations, it may be possible to look at the signal strength as received at the back door to tell when the user is inside the house. That could get you out of the time-of-arrival calculation business.

Another possibility is a small, cheap IR sensor. If there's a person inside the house within ~10 feet of the door, it doesn't unlock automatically. The basic idea would be similar to the sensors on toilets and urinals in public restrooms.

In any case I'm glad to hear that my Tom Swift amulet is finally being made. Next up, the Triphibian Atomicar!
On Mars. Mach, the speed of sound (vibrations), varies with changes in heat, density, etc.
It depends on the startup, but there are opportunities at Japanese and non-Japanese owned startups alike, for people without Japanese skills.

If you have someone who can help you through the paperwork, creating a company isn't so hard. It took us about 60,000 yen and one month to create at Godo-Gaisha (similar to a LLC).
Not having your contact email in your profile doesn't help.
Menu -> Settings -> Advanced -> Privacy -> Content Settings -> "Do not show any images"
Yes deliverability is always going to be an issue. Sending mail from your own domain is really hard. For example, after jumping through all the required hoops to establish trust for my domain I still was going straight to spam for any hotmail address :|

I overcame this by routing all mail through google servers. They have a limit of about 2000 messages per day which may be enough to get you going.
Great to see some underground hip-hop fans on here - for years I was part of an underground duo called Raw Produce - we weren't big enough to reach RapGenius.

I'll just mention that Eso is a good friend and is just as funny in person as on record. We were fortunate to record a few songs with him - lotta fun. I'm a huge fan of El-P, but he was not, as one would say, a particularly warm individual. And El laid out Eso pretty good in that diss.
Except the the difference is 0.5 inches between 4S and 5, vs 1.3" difference between 4S and S3.
Mach 1 always means the speed of sound in the local environment.
But the technical co-founder should understand that it's a startup, are people really not that open to taking a cut now for the possibility of better returns later?

I think that finding a technical cofounder can be as hard as any business problem. The reason I say "can" is because many people are lucky and find their technical cofounder in college and that makes it pretty easy.